The events of the modern pentathlon will take place at two different venues. The North Paris Arena will host the men’s and women’s fencing rounds. The Chateau de Versailles will host the entirety of the semifinal and final rounds. The Chateau de Versailles, also known as the Palace of Versailles — an UNESCO World Heritage site, will make a stunning backdrop for the finale of the equestrian discipline in modern pentathlon. 

Modern pentathlon tests athletes across five separate disciplines. Athletes must swim, fence, ride an unfamiliar horse through a show jumping course — they get just 20 minutes to get acquainted — and finally a foot race, which includes stops to take aim at targets with pistols which emit a laser beam when pulling the trigger.

Seventy-two athletes (36 men, 36 women) will compete in the men's and women's individual event competitions, respectively, with no more than two athletes per National Olympic Committee (NOC).

Breakdown of the modern pentathlon events:

• Riding: A show jumping course that features 15 jumps over 12 obstacles on an unfamiliar horse that the athlete is asigned in a random draw just 20 minutes before they compete.
• Fencing:
  
  • Ranking Round: The first day of competition only, a round-robin tournament in which all 36 athletes compete against each other in one-touch epee bouts. Each last for one minute or until the first touch.
  • Bonus Round: An elimination tournament featuring 30-second bouts (or until the first touch), seeded by results of the ranking round. The athletes will continue to compete if they keep winning.
• Swimming: A 200m freestyle event, with athletes seeded into heats based on their world rankings.
• Running and Shooting: A laser run in which the athletes alternate between running and shooting a laser pistol along a 3km course, with the athletes stopping four times throughout the run to shoot at five targets from 10 meters.

In each discipline, athletes earn points according to their performance. Those points are cumulative, with the final ranking determined by the total points scored across all five disciplines. 

In the laser run, the final event of the competition, athletes start in a staggered start based on the conversion of the cumulative points in the first three disciplines into time (one point = one second).

The scoring specifics, by discipline:

• Riding: Athletes will begin with 300 points, with deductions taken according to the rulebook for faults, refusals, time violations, and any other infractions.
• Fencing:
  • Ranking Round: A win-loss record of 25-10 for the 35 bouts earns 250 points. For each additional victory, the athlete will earn five points. For each defeat beyond the 10th, the athlete loses five points.
  • Bonus Round: Points earned in the fencing ranking round carry over to the bonus round. Each win is worth two points, except for the final bout, where a win could earn a four-point bonus — available just to the winner of the Fencing Ranking Round, who is restricted to a single bout in the fencing bonus round. Athletes do not lose points if they are defeated.
• Swimming: A time of 2:30 earns 250 points, with one point added (or deducted) for every .5 second faster (or slower) than the target time. A false start is given 10 penalty points.
• Running and shooting: A time of 13:20 earns 500 points, with one point added (or deducted) for every second faster (or slower) than the target time.

Since making its debut at the 1912 Stockholm Games, modern pentathlon has had to adapt and evolve numerous times to try and remain relevant. The 2024 Games in Paris are no exception. A new compressed competition timetable has been introduced. All five disciplines will be contested within two hours for the semifinals and finals, rather than three hours of competition spread across more than five and a half hours. 

The other significant change is that competition will now take place over three days instead of two, with a semifinal elimination round being added between the fencing ranking round and the final. Only the top nine athletes per semifinal (for a total of 18 women and 18 men out of the 36 per gender entered) will advance to their finals. 

The order in which the sports are being contested also has changed since Tokyo. The riding competition will take place first, followed by the fencing bonus round, the swimming discipline and finally the laser run. This change was introduced because of repeated issues with horses at back-to-back Olympics that have impacted the medal contenders. The horses are randomly assigned to athletes, adding an element of difficulty, however, there have been refusals by the horse which created said issues that led to the change in order. Previously, riding was the penultimate discipline in the event. The new order ensures no rider would be in medal contention late in the event and then drop because of the randomly assigned horse. It won’t really change the outcome if an athlete can not ride their horse, however, it may make it less devastating than if the athlete was in medal contention so late in the race. 

The horse issues have plagued the event in the last two Olympics, which caused the governing body (UIPM) of the sport, after pressure from the IOC, to replace the discipline after the Paris Games.

What will replace riding in modern pentathlon? 

In late 2022, it was announced that an obstacle course would replace riding in the modern pentathlon. The UIPM took over 60 proposals for disciplines that that could replace the equestrian portion of the event, but ultimately chose the obstacle discipline. It’s possible the course could look a lot like American Nija Warrior’s course, which would satisfy the desire to appeal to younger audiences. 

The UPIM has called the change in disciplines the “biggest shakeup” since the sport made its Olympic debut in 1912.

How high is the modern pentathlon jump?

For Paris, athletes must still compete the riding discipline, which consists of jumping on an unfamiliar horse. They will have 20 minutes and a maximum of five practice jumps to warm up with the animal. There are 12 jumping obstacles that are no higher than 1.2 meters or 4 feet high.

What is the bonus round in the modern pentathlon?

If confused about the bonus round, it isn’t an extra discipline or sport if there’s a tie. It refers to the fencing bonus round that takes place on the second day of competition. It utilizes a single fencing piste where the time limit is reduced to 45 seconds. Athletes are paired from worst to best and receive a point if they win, but losers will not lose a point in defeat – hence the name bonus, only winners get a point.

Modern pentathlon was created by the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin as an homage to the duties required of a solider in the late 19th century to test the strengths of the “ideal, complete athlete”. This is how the five original disciplines were decided: horse riding, swimming, fencing, shooting and running. 

While track and field’s decathlon claims to name the “world’s greatest athlete”, de Coubertin believed the modern pentathlon required a more variation of skills and therefore was the more “complete” Olympic sport. His argument was decathlon uses the same few skills (speed, strength, explosiveness) whereas modern pentathlon required a variety of skills: strength, endurance, dexterity and mental concentration. 

Modern pentathlon is the only Olympic sport created specifically for the modern Olympic Games. 

Hungary Csaba Bohm enters as the 2024 world champion. He earned a perfect score in the equestrian portion of the event and a top score in the fencing discipline. He finished in the top-five of both the swimming and laser run disciplines. 

Egypt’s Ahmed El-Gendy, the silver medalist from Tokyo, is a serious threat to medal after seven straight top-five performances in international competition and 10 of 11 top-five finishes leading up to the 2024 World Championships. El-Gendy could be hampered by a dislocated shoulder that he suffered at the 2024 World Championships, however, he dislocated the same shoulder before the Tokyo Games and still won the silver medal. 

Tokyo bronze medalist, Jun Woong-Tae, looks to be a favorite for a medal again. He is a 29-year-old veteran in the sport and has finished within the top 10 in 80% of his international competitions.

Lithuania’s Laura Asadauskaite will return for her fifth Olympic appearance. She is the only female pentathlete to earn more than one Olympic medal. 

On the opposite side of the age spectrum, South Korea’s Seong Seung-Min looks to make history as the youngest female medalist in the sport. She enters as the reigning world champion. 

Italy’s Alice Sotero and Elena Micheli figure to be in the medal hunt. Micheli won back-to-back world titles in 2022 and 2023. 

Jessica Savner is the lone American in the event and will be making her Olympic debut at age 32.